


you can see my heart burning in the distance

by Lila17



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23522365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lila17/pseuds/Lila17
Summary: Before, Vanellope was a princess. Afterward, she wasn't anything at all.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	you can see my heart burning in the distance

Vanellope is the princess of Sugar Rush, and a racer. The best racer, in fact (though Taffyta will disagree).

In usual game fashion, her castlepalace is designed for her, so she loves it. There’s so many nooks and crannies to find, and the hallways are _definitely_ big enough to drive her kart around in when she feels like it. 

Sour Bill hates that, but that’s okay because he hates everything!

She has this _gigantic_ stuffy, puffy dress for when she’s being an Official Princess, but thank everything that she has a smaller outfit for when she races. It’s blue and comfy and has a little skirt with peanut butter cup ruffles, and it’s great. If she had to wear the big dress while racing, she would most definitely _not win_.

Vanellope always means to go out and see the other games (especially the other racing ones!), but she never quite manages it. Being a princess is busy stuff, after all. Woe is her to be this good at racing.

The one time she gets out there into the lobby, she’s wearing her puffy stuffy dress, and Sugar Rush is basically a brand new game so seeing everyone else in the arcade makes her jaw drop. She wishes that Taffyta or Candlehead or _someone_ agreed to come with her to see this, because they’re competitive but they don’t really hate each other.

She hauls her dress mass around Game Central Station, and picks the biggest person she can see immediately to hop in front of.

“Woaahh,” she says, looking up (all the way up!) at the person. “Hey, why are your hands so freakishly big?”

The person gives her a grumpy, unimpressed look and keeps walking, and then someone is calling out that the arcade is going to open soon, which is really important information!

She turns and skips back to her game and palacecastle, and- something’s weird. The door’s open like someone went in (which is kinda fine or whatever, she isn’t really using most of that space at any given time) and there’s a long series of chocolate footprints like the person got lost getting to the castle and fell in a lake or something. She starts following it, curiosity piqued. 

Strangely, it seems like they’re heading toward the game mechanics section, with all the little controls and things that no one even knows how to mess with, much less want to, and then-

Something-

_weird-_

happens.

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———  
  
  
  
  
  


She remembers...nothing.

Not _anything_.

Where is she?

Her outfit is blue and the skirt has peanut butter cup ruffles. It’s comfy. Where is she?

She's outside, near a long row of- oh, _karts_. That feels right. She goes over and puts her hand on one uncertainly. Is this hers?

“Hey, get away from!- wait, who are you?”

She turns around and sees a girl with pink clothes and white hair running towards her. She backs up, and casts around her mind trying to answer the girl’s question.

“I’m Vanellope Von Schweetz,” she says finally.

The girl gestures with her lollipop disinterestedly. “Taffyta.” Then she frowns, as a crowd of people follow her over. “What part of the game are you from?”

 _Game?_ No, no, that feels right too. Game. Vanellope is in a game.

And there’s something else that feels right. Her eyes zip around the karts around her, and Vanellope squares her shoulders. “I’m a racer.”

Taffyta’s eyebrows lift into her hair. 

The entire group of people (who are also racers, she guesses) starts arguing after that, with some of them insisting that they’ve never seen her before but someone else pointing out that based off her design, she can’t be anything _but_ a racer. Vanellope doesn’t know what’s going on, but somehow she feels that if she could just get behind the wheel of a car and drive then everything would make sense again.

Again?

Wait, was there a time when things made sense originally-?

There’s a screech from a car pulling up, and everyone turns to look at the person driving it. Taffyta shoves her way to the front and waves him down. “King Candy! There’s a girl here who says she’s a racer, but we don’t recognize her!”

King Candy is...weird. He’s cheery and full of energy, but something about him feels wrong. She can’t describe what it is.

All of the other racers are talking at once, and suddenly King Candy gasps. “No, I think I understand. She’s a glitch!” None of them know what that means, least of all her, and something sick crawls into Vanellope’s stomach. 

“A glitch is like- a mistake in the code. Something that wasn’t meant to exist,” King Candy explains, smiling. “As if she wasn’t originally programmed, but some of the code got warped and created her.”

Is that right?

The racers are looking back and forth between her and King Candy. Taffyta just looks smug. “I _knew_ I’d never seen you before!”

King Candy looks her directly in the eye. “Do you think that’s correct, Vanellope?” 

They stare at each for a second before Vanellope looks away, gripping her jacket. “...I don’t know,” she mumbles finally.

King Candy thinks for a second, hmm-ing. He snaps his fingers. “One thing I know about glitches is that they can’t leave their games! If you want, we can go up to the game exit and check.” King Candy smiles at her, and for a second Vanellope catches a flash of something cruel.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s check.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


——

  
  
  
  


She can’t leave the game.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


——  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The racers- no, the _other_ racers, because Vanellope’s going to be one, she is- don’t quite know what to do with her.

Vanellope doesn’t really know what to do with herself either? And well...she hasn’t really existed before, so it’s not like she has experience with doing things. She’s a glitch. She didn’t form with the game.

The thought of that is terrifying, to be honest. It feels enormous, like it could strangle her. What is she supposed to do with _anything_ about herself if she wasn’t meant to exist?

Taffyta has a role and Candlehead has a role and King Candy has a role, and even the candy fans and the trees and clouds have a role in this game, but she doesn’t. Existential crisis, what ho.

She wanders a lot, around the game. Mostly just the stretches of landscape that don’t have any structures in them, because King Candy completely flipped out the one time she went near the race track while the arcade was open. Actually, he doesn’t seem to like her going near the racetrack or cars at all.

Vanellope doesn’t actually know what she expected. A place to- live? (King Candy has a lot of space in his castle, but he very pointedly doesn’t ever let her go inside it. She’s still hanging out in the forest). A chance to try racing with one of the other racers’ karts? (None of them want to let someone else even _touch_ their karts, much less drive them). Any kind of community or friendship at all? (The other racers don’t really know what to do with Vanellope, but a person that isn’t part of a group turns into a person that the group hates pretty fast).

(And King Candy acts like it’s written in his _code_ that he’s supposed to dislike her).

But Vanellope can feel it in her own code that she’s supposed to race. Maybe if the code messed up and created a girl with black hair and a blue jacket and a design like a racer, it messed up and created a girl who was _actually_ a racer too.

So she holds out and waits for her opportunity. She tells herself that if she can get behind the wheel of a kart, it’ll be okay.  
  
  


————-

  
  
  


She accidentally finds the space inside the bottle mountain while wandering. So, the first time that King Candy seems to get _really_ fed up with her trying to watch the races while the arcade’s open, and he invites her inside his castle but suddenly the offer feels dangerous instead of comforting and she doesn’t want to accept, that’s where she goes.

It’s a good decision. The guards look for her for a disturbingly long time.

From that moment on, King Candy drops the nice act and transitions to trying to capture her whenever she appears. Luckily, all the wandering pays off in the fact that she knows the Sugar Rush gamescape like the back of her hand- there’s tons of nooks and crannies that no one else knows a thing about. 

When regular racers are created, they’re born with the coins they need clutched tight in their hands. Vanellope was created with her hands empty- but she only needs one, only needs to get a coin _once_ , because if she races she knows she can win.

She watches all the races she can- takes note of what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, what works but only if you get it just right, and watches until she knows all the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of each of the racers’ driving styles. 

(King Candy and Taffyta are both reckless, but King Candy is willing to go out of his way to take someone else out; Taffyta doesn’t think that far ahead. Minty is by far the best at drifting out of all of them, but Jubileena has a tendency to speed too fast and go too widely around corners. Candlehead will completely lose her mind and stop dead if her candle gets extinguished. Rancis likes to show off.)

‘Cause she’s going to do it one of these days. She’s gone through so many plans and she doesn’t know when or how, but she’s going to race.

  
  
  
  
  
  


——————

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’s never seen the big man in the forest before, and he’s clearly not from the game. She watches him for a few minutes before approaching.

“Hi mister,” she says, the words popping off her tongue. In response, he jumps and falls nearly halfway down the tree. He’s the funniest guy she’s met in ages, and they talk about things for a few minutes while he blatantly lies about there being a Candy Tree Trimming Department.

Then she looks up and her eyes finally catch on the circular shape, the flash of gold that she’s been searching for her entire life. In that moment, it feels like her heart explodes and dissolves into gold sparkles in her chest.

“ _A gold coin!_ ”


End file.
